What are we mourning when we mourn helen tartar's loss? we are responding, first and foremost, to the loss of a friend, a collaborator, a companion in crime. Like so many, I owe my career to Helen. She plucked me out of a professional abyss at a crucial pre-promotion moment, got a stalled manuscript accepted, into production, and out into the world in an unheard-of nine months. Along the way she sent me countless messages of support testifying (I can now see) to her savvy and ingenuity but phrased in a way that made me think it was merely my due. Heady stuff for an oppressed-feeling assistant professor at an Ivy League school coming up for promotion to associate professor, and inspiring enough in all the right ways to catalyze not just that promotion but a continuing sense that someone—somewhere—would respond to my work and push me in the right directions. More than an editor, Helen was the reader I—we all—yearn for: responsive, generous, exacting.